Quotes from Kallistos Ware

If there is a "problem of evil" there is also a "problem of good." Wherever we look we see not only confusion but beauty. In snowflake, leaf or insect, we discover structured patterns of a delicacy and balance that nothing manufactured by human skill can equal. We are not to sentimentalize these things, but we cannot ignore them.

All things are permeated and maintained in being by the uncreated energies of God, and so all things are a theophany that mediates his presence (pp. 21-23). At the heart of each thing is its inner principle or logos, implanted within it by the Creator Logos; and so through the logoi we enter into communion with the Logos (p. 33). God is above and beyond all things, yet as Creator he is also within all things—"panentheism", not pantheism

God's Incarnation opens the way to man's deification. To be deified is, more specifically, to be "christified": the divine likeness that we are called to attain is the likeness of Christ. It is through Jesus the God-man that we men are "ingodded", "divinized", made "sharers in the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4).

For me to be a Spirit-bearer is to realize all the distinctive characteristics in my personality; it is to become truly free, truly myself in my uniqueness.

When St Antony of Egypt was asked, "What rules shall I keep so as to please God?", he replied: "Wherever you go, have God always before your eyes; in whatever you do or say, have an example from the Holy Scriptures; and whatever the place in which you dwell, do not be quick to move elsewhere. Keep these three things, and you will live.

The only pure and all-sufficient source of the doctrines of the faith", writes Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, "is the revealed word of God, contained in the Holy Scriptures.

As we read the Bible, we are all the time gathering information, wrestling with the sense of obscure sentences, comparing and analyzing. But this is secondary. The real purpose of Bible study is much more than this—to feed our love for Christ, to kindle our hearts into prayer, and to provide us with guidance in our personal life.

It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God's ineffable greatness with the human mind."10 But,

Our human task as craftsmen or manufacturers is to discern this logos dwelling in each thing and to render it manifest; we seek not to dominate but to co-operate.

According to his divine nature Christ is "one in essence" (homoousios) with God the Father; according to his human nature he is homoousios with us men. According

The purpose of the creation doctrine, then, is not to ascribe a chronological starting-point to the world, but to affirm that at this present moment, as at all moments, the world depends for its existence upon God. When

to seek what is for the benefit of all",

to the end, and without exceptions: then all is justified and life is illumined, whereas otherwise it is an abomination and a burden

Isaac the Syrian warns us that God's wrath visits all who refuse the bitter cross of agony, the cross of active suffering, and who, striving after visions and special graces of prayer, waywardly seek to appropriate the glories of the Cross. He also says, "God's grace comes of itself, suddenly, without our seeing it approach. It comes when the place is clean." Therefore, carefully, diligently, constantly clean the place; sweep it with the broom of humility.

In the words of John Scotus Eriugena, "Every visible or invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God." The Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, sees God everywhere and rejoices in him. Not without reason did the early Christians attribute to Christ this saying: "Lift the stone and you will find me; cut the wood in two and there am I.

The power of God is shown, not so much in his creation of the world or in any of his miracles, but rather in the fact that out of love God has "emptied himself" (Phil. 2:7), has poured himself out in generous self-giving, by his own free choice consenting to suffer and to die. And this self-emptying is a self-fulfillment: kenosis is plerosis.

Not only in this present age but also in the Age to come," says St Irenaeus, "God will always have something more to teach man, and man will always have something more to learn from God.

It is easier to measure the entire sea with a tiny cup than to grasp God's ineffable greatness with the human mind.

The Christian God is not just a unit but a union, not just unity but community. There

To be a Christian is to be a traveller. Our situation, say the Greek Fathers, is like that of the Israelite people in the desert of Sinai: we live in tents, not houses, for spiritually we are always on the move. We are on a journey through the inward space of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar, for it is a journey out of time into eternity.

However oppressed by my own or others' anguish, I am not to forget that there is more in the world than this, there is much more.

to celebrate the Eucharist, 'the medicine of immortality'.*

We think the Trinity, speak the Trinity, breathe the Trinity.

There is in God something analogous to "society". He is not a single person, loving himself alone, not a self-contained monad or "The One". He is triunity: three equal persons, each one dwelling in the other two by virtue of an unceasing movement of mutual love.